January 23, 2019

Three European green crab have been found in Samish Bay, north of Mt. Vernon, a new detection location for the globally-damaging invasive on Washington’s inland shorelines.

The three adult crabs, including an egg-bearing (gravid) female and two males, were captured by shellfish growers working for Taylor Shellfish Farms on three successive nights in early January. The growers recognized the crabs as invasive while handling oysters and sorting out other animals, and quickly reported them to Washington Department of ...

November 1, 2018

The turning of the leaves signals a winding-down of green crab trapping activities. Just as it feels right to us to hunker down and stay warm, cooler water temperatures also cause green crab to become less catchable in the fall and winter. Crab Team monitors have pulled and stored their last traps, and, as of today, all of the data are into Crab Team HQ here in Seattle. While we have provided snapshots and updates ...

September 25, 2018

WSG Crab Team volunteers at Kala Point, near Port Townsend, captured a single European green crab during their final early detection sampling effort for the 2018 season on September 8. In follow up trapping efforts in the area, staff from Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) captured an additional green crab at Scow Bay, a marshy area between Indian and Marrowstone Islands. The two captures add to the list of sites at which green crab have been ...

Header image courtesy of Zach Moore/USFWS

October 25, 2017

At the end of August, Crab Team received an email on our “tip line” from a beachwalker who had spotted a European green crab near Hobuck Beach in Makah Bay. The photograph submitted enabled us to immediately confirm the sighting, which was a new record for that area. The crab was located on Makah tribal land, and the Makah subsequently undertook a rapid assessment trapping effort to determine the extent of any green ...

October 12, 2017

Following the recent capture of a single European green crab at Lagoon Point, on Whidbey Island (read more), Crab Team staff and volunteers, in consultation with the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), headed back to the site last week to carry out assessment trapping as an expanded early detection effort. Over three days, the group conducted 114 trap sets, and captured only one additional European green crab.

This type of assessment trapping is the first step ...

September 19, 2017

Crab Team volunteers at Lagoon Point, on the west side of Whidbey Island, captured a single European green crab in their final sampling effort for this year. The male crab, at 47 mm across the carapace, is most likely a 2017 crab, part of this year’s cohort. A team of four volunteers from the island has been monitoring the site, April through September, for the past two years, but this is the first evidence of European green crab ...

August 23, 2017

A single European green crab was captured in Sequim Bay last week by Neil Harrington, an Environmental Biologist with the Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe. Since the discovery of a small population of green crab in nearby Dungeness Bay this April, Harrington has been steadily trapping his way around Sequim Bay on the lookout for more of the invaders. Intensive trapping by Harrington and coworkers over the last week did not capture any additional European green crab, suggesting that ...

August 14, 2017

It looks as though Crab Team, now a network of 52 early detection sites monitored by more than 200 volunteers and several dozen staff from partner agencies, might have another ally out in the mud. Last week, during regular monthly sampling in a channel at the south end of Padilla Bay, Lindsey Parker found a European green crab. This was definitely notable, because we would rather not find any green crab, but not entirely surprising because the monitoring ...